Henrietta, who had been watching the exchange with hands on hips and mounting incredulity, marched in between the two men.
‘In case you forgot, I’m standing right here. Hello!’ She executed a sarcastic little wave. ‘And I’m not,’ she said with a repressive glower at Vaughn, ‘being carted off to anyone’s harem.’
‘I can see that,’ replied Vaughn, the laugh lines at the corners of his eyes deepening. ‘You would be dreadful for morale. Even if pleasing to the eye. No.’ He shook his head. ‘The Chief Eunuch would never agree.’
‘It’s not the eunuch I’m worried about. He’ – Miles jabbed a finger at Vaughn, looking fiercely at Henrietta as he did so – ‘is just a rake.’
‘Just?’ murmured Vaughn. ‘I prefer to regard it as a way of life.’
Miles ignored him. ‘He may be able to turn a clever phrase, and do that…thing with his cravat—’
‘A design of my own devising,’ interjected Vaughn blandly. He subsided with a slight gurgling noise as Henrietta’s foot descended heavily on his.
Miles saw the interplay but misread the significance.
‘Dammit, Hen, how can you let yourself be so taken in? All those flowery compliments – they’re just what rakes do. It’s pure flummery. It’s not real. No matter what he says, he doesn’t love you like – er—’ Miles broke off, face frozen in an expression of hopeless horror.
A shocked silence descended over the room. Turnip’s head poked curiously out from under the settee.
‘Like?’ prompted Henrietta in a voice that didn’t sound like her own.
Miles blinked rapidly, mouth opening and closing in soundless alarm, looking like a condemned man brought face-to-face with the headsman’s axe for the first time. Concluding there was no escape, Miles climbed the scaffold with dignity.
‘Like I do,’ he said heavily.
‘Love? Me? You?’ squeaked Henrietta, both vocabulary and vocal range deserting her. She thought a moment, and added, ‘Really?’
‘That wasn’t how I was going to say it,’ burst out Miles, looking at her entreatingly. ‘I had it all planned out.’
Henrietta’s face dissolved into a dizzying smile. Shaking back her hair, she announced giddily, ‘I don’t care how you said it as long as you don’t take it back.’
Miles was still mourning the loss of his Romantic Plan. ‘There was going to be champagne, and oysters, and you’ – he held out both hands as though shifting a piece of furniture – ‘were going to be sitting there, and I was going to get down on one knee, and…and…’
Words failed Miles. He waved his arms about in mute distress.
Words seldom failed Henrietta.
‘You great idiot,’ she said in such loving tones that Vaughn discreetly removed himself several paces, and Turnip climbed all the way out from under the settee to attain a better view.
Holding out both hands to Miles, Henrietta lifted shining eyes to his battered face. ‘I never expected grand declarations of love or romantic gestures.’
‘But you deserved them,’ Miles said stubbornly. ‘You deserved flowers and chocolates and…’ He paused, scrabbling around in his memory. He didn’t think it was precisely the moment to bring up the peeled grapes. ‘Poetry,’ he finished with grim triumph.
‘I think we can contrive to muddle by without it,’ Henrietta said with mock solemnity. ‘Of course, if you could see your way to the occasional ode…’
‘You deserved better,’ Miles insisted. ‘Not a hurried marriage, and a hurried wedding night and—’
Henrietta dimpled. ‘I have no complaints on that score. Do you?’
‘Don’t be absurd,’ he said gruffly.
‘There you have it, then,’ she said firmly.
Miles opened his mouth to argue. Henrietta stopped him by the simple expedient of placing a finger on his lips. The gentle touch silenced Miles more abruptly than being tackled by a horde of rampaging Frenchmen. Henrietta resolved to remember that for future arguments. She just hoped the French never figured it out.
‘I don’t want better,’ she said simply, eyes eloquent on his. ‘I want you.’
Miles made a strange choking noise that sounded like it wanted to be a laugh when it grew up. ‘Thanks, Hen,’ he said tenderly.
‘You know what I mean.’
‘Yes.’ Miles lifted the hand she had held to his lips and kissed the palm in a gesture of such reverence it made Henrietta’s throat tight. ‘I do.’
‘I love you, you know,’ she said, around the strange obstruction in her throat.
‘I didn’t know, actually,’ Miles said, looking at her wonderingly, like a voyager viewing his home after a long journey, putting together all the old familiar places again in a new and beloved way.
‘How could you not?’ demanded Henrietta, ‘with me following after you like a lovesick duck?’
‘A duck?’ echoed Miles, face creasing into an incredulous grin. His shoulders shook with suppressed laughter. ‘Trust me, Hen, you never looked like a duck. A hen, maybe.’ Miles wiggled his eyebrows. Henrietta groaned. ‘But never a duck.’
Henrietta whacked him on the chest. ‘It’s not funny. It was dreadful. And then when you were forced to marry me…’
Miles coughed, his amusement fading. ‘I’m not sure “forced” is exactly the right word.’
‘What else would you call it when someone threatens to call you out?’
‘There’s one slight problem with that logic.’ Miles paused, looking slightly sheepish. ‘In case you didn’t notice, Richard didn’t exactly want us to marry.’
Henrietta’s eyes narrowed as she digested this information. She looked closely at Miles. ‘You mean…’
‘Mm-hmm.’ Miles scrubbed his hand through his hair. ‘I was afraid that if I gave you time to think it through, you would recover your senses and agree with him. It could have been hushed up, you know. Richard’s staff is inhumanly discreet, and as for the Thol-mondelays…’ Miles shrugged.
‘That,’ said Henrietta meltingly, looking like someone who had just been handed a decade’s worth of Christmas presents all at once, ‘is better than poetry.’
‘Good,’ said Miles, taking her into his arms. ‘Because,’ he added, his lips a whisper away from hers, ‘I’m not writing you any.’
Their lips met with a purity of emotion that was ode, sonnet, and sestina all in one. No rhymes had ever been smoother, no meter more perfect, no metaphors more harmonious than the melding of mouths and arms, the press of her body against his, as they leant against each other in an enchanted golden circle where there were no French spies, no sardonic ex-suitors, no importunate schoolmates, nothing but the two of them meandering languorously through their own personal pastoral idyll.
‘Devil take it, I knew there was something havey-cavey going on,’ said Turnip, who had climbed entirely out from under the settee and was looking as censorious as someone in a carnation pink coat could contrive to look.
‘It’s not havey-cavey,’ tossed back Miles, eyes never leaving Henrietta, who looked delightfully flushed and even more delightfully befuddled. ‘We’re married.’
Turnip considered. ‘Don’t know if that makes it better or worse. Secret marriages, not at all the thing, you know.’
‘They will be now,’ prophesied Miles. ‘So why don’t you just go find yourself one, before everyone else starts contracting them, too.’
Vaughn coughed discreetly. That eliciting no reaction, he coughed somewhat less discreetly.
‘As charming as this is,’ he said in a tone that caused a flush to rise to Miles’s cheeks, ‘I suggest you postpone your raptures until the Black Tulip is in the possession of the proper authorities. I assume you do know those proper authorities, Dorrington?’
Miles reluctantly relinquished his grasp on Henrietta’s shoulders and turned to face Vaughn, keeping one hand protectively on her waist, just in case Vaughn still cherished any notions about harem girls.
‘I do,’ he said, adding, with just a hint of
malicious satisfaction, ‘They’re the ones who set me on to you.’
Vaughn sighed, brushing an imaginary speck of dust from the ruffles of his sleeve. ‘I don’t understand. I lead such a quiet life.’
‘Like Covent Garden at sunset,’ muttered Miles. ‘Ow!’
‘That’s what shins are for,’ explained Henrietta benignly.
‘If that’s what you think, remind me to wear thicker pantaloons,’ said Miles, rubbing his aching appendage. ‘Potentially armoured ones.’
‘I’ll make them for you myself,’ said Henrietta.
‘I’d rather you remove them yourself,’ Miles whispered in her ear.
The two exchanged a look of such smouldering intimacy that Vaughn found it necessary to cough again, and Turnip burst out with, ‘Discussing a gentleman’s nether garments – not at all the thing in mixed company, you know!’
‘We’re married,’ chorused Henrietta and Miles.
‘Sickening, isn’t it?’ commented Vaughn to no one in particular. ‘Remind me never to be a newlywed. It is an insufferable state.’
A sarcastic voice rose from the floor. ‘Could you please get on with deciding my fate? This floor is exceedingly uncomfortable, and the conversation even worse.’
Henrietta glanced down. ‘You don’t seem unduly perturbed.’
‘Why should I be?’ said the marquise, in tones that suggested she saw this as merely a temporary setback. ‘You have a most amateur organization.’
‘Who managed,’ pointed out Henrietta, ‘to catch you.’
‘A mere technicality,’ snapped the marquise.
‘We’ll have to take her to the War Office,’ Miles interrupted. ‘And then’ – he exchanged another look with Henrietta that made her go pink to the tips of her ears – ‘we are going home.’
Home. It was such a lovely word.
‘I find myself again moved to gallantry,’ said Vaughn in tones of intense weariness. ‘If you wish, I will undertake to deliver our mutual friend to – the War Office, you said?’
Miles visibly hesitated.
‘Or,’ said Vaughn smoothly, angling his head towards Turnip, ‘you could have him do it.’
Miles handed Vaughn the ends of the rope. ‘You’re a good chap, Vaughn. And if she escapes, I know where to look.’
‘You have a rare jewel, Dorrington. See that you take good care of her.’
Miles had no difficulty whatsoever in promising to do so.
As dusk settled on the city, Miles and Henrietta wandered hand in hand through the tangled streets of London to Loring House. Strains of red and gold flared in the sky like heraldic banners signalling triumph. Henrietta and Miles didn’t even notice. They meandered through the gloaming in their own rosy glow, eyes for no one but each other. The special providence that looked out for fools and lovers guarded their path. If refuse grimed the ground underfoot, neither noticed; if footpads plied their sinister trade, they did it elsewhere. And if, from time to time, the couple took advantage of the lengthening shadows to exchange something more than whispers, spying eyes and wagging tongues held no fear for them.
Given the profusion of long shadows and convenient cul-de-sacs, it was a very long walk home, indeed. It was full dark by the time Grosvenor Square came into view, and they had worked out to their satisfaction a program of events for the evening, which included a bath (a suggestion to which Miles acceded with an alarming alacrity that boded ill for the elderly bathtub), bed (Miles), supper (Henrietta), and bed (Miles).
‘You already said that,’ protested Henrietta.
‘Some things bear repeating,’ Miles said smugly. He leant closer, his lips brushing her ear as they walked up the stairs to the front door, in the uneven light of the torcheres. ‘Again, and again, and again.’
‘Incorrigible,’ sighed Henrietta, with a look of mock despair.
‘Indubitably,’ agreed Miles, just as the front door swung open in front of them.
Miles opened his mouth to inform his butler that they would be not at home to callers. Not today, not tomorrow, preferably not even next week.
‘Ah, Stwyth,’ began Miles, and stopped short, careening into Henrietta, who was doing her best to imitate a pillar of salt.
It wasn’t Stwyth at the door. Nor was it the underhousemaid from whom Henrietta had borrowed her current costume.
In the doorway of Loring House stood a petite woman dressed in rich travelling clothes. Lady Uppington’s gloved hands were on her hips, and one booted foot beat an ominous tattoo against the marble floor. Behind her, Henrietta could see her father, also dressed in travelling attire, arms folded across his chest. Neither looked happy.
‘Oh, dear,’ said Henrietta.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Ever after, happily: 1) the incarceration of England’s enemies; 2) the felicitous result of the transcendent power of reciprocated affection; 3) all of the above
– from the Personal Codebook of the Pink Carnation
‘In,’ said Lady Uppington in a tone that boded no good. ‘Both of you. Now.’
Henrietta went with all the enthusiasm of an aristocrat mounting the steps to the guillotine. Miles followed meekly behind.
‘Hello, Mama, Papa,’ said Henrietta in a slightly strangled voice. ‘Did you have a nice time in Kent?’
Her father raised a silvered eyebrow in a look that managed to convey incredulity, disappointment, and anger all at the same time. Quite impressive for one eyebrow. Henrietta clamped down on a surge of nervous giggles that she feared would do little to improve her position in the eyes of her parents.
Lady Uppington didn’t rely on facial expressions to convey her feelings. Slamming the door with a vehemence that left no one in any doubt as to her emotions, she whirled to face her errant offspring.
‘What were you thinking?’ she demanded, pacing in furious circles around Henrietta and Miles. ‘Just answer me that! What were you thinking?’
‘We caught a French spy,’ interjected Miles hopefully, distraction having worked upon Lady Uppington in the past.
It failed miserably.
‘Don’t even try to change the subject!’ snapped Lady Uppington, looking, if anything, even angrier than before. ‘I can’t go away for one weekend! One weekend! I am rendered speechless, speechless’ – Lady Uppington flung both arms into the air – ‘by the sheer imprudence of your actions, by the complete lack of respect you have shown for your reputation, your family, and the solemn nature of matrimony.’
‘It was all my fault,’ interrupted Miles gallantly, placing a protective hand on Henrietta’s shoulder.
Lady Uppington jabbed a finger at him. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll get to you in a minute.’ She turned the admonishing appendage back on Henrietta. ‘Did I raise you to behave like this?’
‘No, Mama,’ protested Henrietta. ‘But what happened was…’
‘We know what happened,’ said her father grimly. ‘Richard sent to us.’
‘Bleargh,’ said Henrietta.
‘Clearly, I have failed,’ announced Lady Uppington. ‘I have failed as a mother.’
Henrietta cast a desperate glance over her shoulder at Miles, who looked about as ready as she was to dissolve into a guilty puddle of remorse on the dingy marble floor.
Lord Uppington stepped in, looking at them both with an expression of resigned irritation.
‘It’s not the match itself that we mind,’ Lord Uppington said mildly. ‘We’re very happy to have you officially join the family, Miles. There is no one we would have preferred for Henrietta.’
Miles perked up slightly.
His face fell again as Lord Uppington went on in the same measured, wearied tones. ‘However, we cannot understand what would induce you to behave in so precipitate, and’ – Lord Uppington looked hard at both his daughter and his son-in-law, pronouncing the next word with painful clarity – ‘unintelligent a fashion. I had thought you both had better sense than that. We are painfully disappointed in you both.’
‘Unless,’ c
ut in Lady Uppington, looking closely at her daughter, ‘there was a reason for your unseemly haste?’
Henrietta’s head shot up again – in indignation. ‘Mother!’
Lady Uppington assessed her daughter’s flushed cheeks with an expert maternal eye and arrived at her own conclusions. ‘Don’t fly into a snit with me, young lady. What did you expect people would think?’
‘Er,’ said Henrietta intelligently.
‘And your brother!’ Lady Uppington shook her head in a way that boded no good to Richard once she got her hands on him. ‘I don’t know what he was thinking to let you rush into matrimony like that. I have raised a brood of children without an ounce of sense between them.’ She emitted one of her infamous harrumphs, the sound that had cast countesses out of countenance, and frightened royal dukes from the room.
Henrietta winced. ‘Sorry?’ she ventured.
Lady Uppington noted the wince, and pressed her advantage. ‘Didn’t any of you stop to think that so hurried a marriage would spark scandal rather than stem it? Hmm?’
Henrietta felt Miles’s hands tighten on her shoulders, and his breath ruffle her snarled hair as he said resolutely, ‘But we are married.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Lady Uppington irritably. ‘We’ll have to think of some sort of story. A secret engagement, perhaps,’ she muttered to herself, waving a hand in the air, ‘or a strange wasting disease… Hmm. Miles thought he only had three days to live.’
Henrietta glanced up at Miles, a bit battered, but otherwise a strapping specimen of manhood. Just how strapping a specimen was something that did not bear thinking of in the presence of her parents. Henrietta’s cheeks turned pink.
‘I don’t think anyone will believe that,’ she said.
‘You can criticise,’ said Lady Uppington sternly, ‘when you come up with a better idea.’
‘Why not,’ suggested Miles, thinking hard, ‘tell everyone that it was a private ceremony? Which it was,’ he added as an afterthought. ‘It wasn’t as though we went to Gretna Green. The bishop of London was there.’
‘And what he was thinking, I don’t know, either,’ said Lady Uppington in a way that suggested trouble for the diocese.